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About our research

With the provision of functions on chatting and casual flirting, the invention of online dating applications is receiving great applause from netizens all around the world. The first-ever online dating applications such as Tinder and OkCupid are some popular examples showing that online communication has already become a trend for meeting new friends today. However, the usage of these applications highly depends on the purposes of users. Some might use the applications to search for true love, while some might simply make use of them in searching sex partners.

 

Popularity of such applications keep raising among heterosexual group, yet how about homosexual group? Are they the sexual minority in the virtual world of these applications? Based on the opinions from our gay friends, we have discovered that gays are highly active - only in the applications that target on gay people. The most prevalent dating apps for gay men in current time, such as Grindr, Hornet and Blued have place their emphasis on geosocial networks, which allow users to search for others nearby. Being long used to going to gay bar or sauna, the emergence of these apps has patently become an alternative platform for gay men to meet each other, for the interactions within the community is unprecedentedly convenient by using the mobile apps.

 

In this research, we have put our focuses on Blued, which is a mobile dating app frequently used by gay men in Hong Kong and China. What amused us the most is its function of news feed, live streaming and filter providing various choices of body types preferences, revealing the possibilities of queer practices via a gay community. What are the usual practices of users in this online homosexual world? How do they interact with each other? How do they represent themselves? Would they conform to the male gender performativity? Or are they creating some queer possibilities and getting away from the hegemonic masculine world? These all made us interested in doing this research.

 

For methodology, we have conducted our research with literature reviews related to gay and queer culture. Moreover, we have done interviews with two interviewees who have actively engaged in the online gay community. These have made significant contributiona to our research.

Research questions

Main question:

-Is there any possibility for queer practices in the mobile dating app for gay?

Sub-questions:

-What are the special features of the dating app Blued?

-How the users represent their bodies online?

Is there any unique language within the online community?

Methodologies

- Literature reviews: conduct research by reading literature related to gay and queer culture

- Empirical work: gain background information and experience by using the app Blued

- Interviews: interviews with two interviewees who have actively engaged in the online gay community

Conclusion

Our research has three major outcomes, which are the online representation of hegemonic masculinity in gay apps, “Gaydar” as a primary tool to represent sexual identity and the importance of both online and physical spaces in the constitution of cohesion of gay community.

 

Regarding the online representation, it is significant that hegemonic masculinity is the prevalent trend in gay apps. Based on our empirical work, the most popular users usually fulfill the mainstream standard of handsomeness,  possess special talents and has a masculine body as represented in their profiles and live streaming videos. Although subordinate masculinity is revealed by some of the queer users, they are still the non-mainstream within the community. As our interviewees mentioned, the diverse options of body-type filter is merely a niche market strategy to meet the demands of different users. Masculinity is still the ideal type desired by most of the gay users. With the purposes of finding sex partners or boyfriend, it is likely for them to represent an image that close to the mainstream masculinity. This result is in accordance with Yau’ research, in which gay users tend to represent themselves with reference to their daily offline experience. Therefore, although gay apps create possibility for cyberqueer, they have limited contribution to the reconstruction of sexual hierarchy due to the approach of users.

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